


The Interview

by misseffect



Series: The Normandy Detective Agency [2]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: 1940s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - No Reapers, Alternate Universe - Noir, Canon-Typical Violence, Detective Noir, F/M, First Meetings, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Pre-Relationship, Shakarian - Freeform, Slow Burn, no plan only write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:09:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29028483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misseffect/pseuds/misseffect
Summary: Alternative title: How I Met Your Father.Part of the Normandy Detective Agency series - a collection of Noir / Human AU one-shots.See notes for trigger warning & a glossary of abbreviations / acronyms.
Relationships: Female Shepard & Garrus Vakarian, Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Series: The Normandy Detective Agency [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112396
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	The Interview

_**THE EXAMINER** _

_May 2nd 1947_

**DOCTOR ACQUITTED**

The jury took just thirty minutes to acquit renowned surgeon Dr. Richard Saleon on multiple counts of first degree murder at the United States District Court for Southern California this afternoon.

The prosecution alleged that between April 1946 and February 1947, Dr. Saleon caused the deaths of 9 individuals at an unlicensed medical clinic in West Adams, Eastern Los Angeles. The Geer Avenue address sustained significant damage in a fire on March 25th, shortly after the doctor's arrest. The blaze was determined to have been caused by an electrical fault and no arrests were made.

Following a month-long trial, Dr. Saleon was today cleared of all 9 charges, after the jury found "no evidence beyond the circumstantial" implicating him in the deaths.

In a dramatic end to proceedings, arresting officer in the case against Dr. Saleon, LAPD Detective Garrus Vakarian, was involved in an altercation with the defendant inside the court building.

Following the verdict, Detective Vakarian alleged that key testimony had been deliberately and unjustifiably struck off to confound a guilty verdict. Lawyers for the defence maintained that some evidence was obtained unlawfully. The defence's objection was upheld by the court. 

The LAPD has since clarified that they accept the ruling. Detective Vakarian has been suspended from duty pending a conduct investigation.

In a statement made by his lawyer outside the courthouse, Dr. Saleon thanked all those "instrumental in seeing justice done", adding that "[he] is looking forward to returning to his research soon".

"Shepard, come and take a look at this."

Shepard stuck her head around Anderson's office door.

He's at his desk reading the Examiner, with the windows behind him flung open to the spring weather. The small office is in its usual state of meticulous cleanliness. Four years of military service had somehow failed to knock the slovenly out of Shepard, and she's pretty sure Anderson regrets hiring her every time he sets eyes on her desk.

He folds the paper in half and offers it to her. "Bottom left."

Shepard scans the article, "They've gotta be kidding... 'no evidence beyond circumstantial' - as if nine people got together and removed their own organs. Christ."

"It didn't even make page 4 this time," Anderson says.

When Saleon was arrested, the Examiner put his face smack-dab on the front page. Shepard glances up from the article. "Somebody's gotta be leaning on them, right?"

"Seems like it. I'll pick up the Times later - see what they've got to say."

"Mm," Shepard says, absently. Something else is nagging at her. "I think there was a Vakarian on the desk when I was a dispatcher, y'know." And how many Vakarian's can the LAPD have?

That gets Anderson's interest. "Do you remember anything about him?"

"Not much," Shepard said. "He was one of the decent ones from what I remember. A couple of the girls were sweet on him, I think. God knows why - " she adds, " - we never met any of them."

The close, bright dispatchers room, full of radio chatter and ruffled paper and ticking switchboards, sometimes feels like it belongs in somebody else's memory. Like it wandered into hers by accident.

She remembers Vakarian, vaguely, and she's not sure how much of it is spliced with other detectives. Well-mannered - not ambitious in the way some of them were - but sharp and unrelenting. Hot-tempered.

"Ash might remember him, she was at R&I about the same time."

The Examiner piece runs alongside a wonky, crowded photograph of a man - who she assumes is Vakarian - pinning Dr. Saleon to a wall in a courthouse corridor, while bystanders pull them away from each other. It's shrunk down small so Shepard can't make out much detail, but she certainly doesn't envy Saleon in that moment.

"If he's smart, he'll quit before they can get around to firing him." Anderson says.

"He must've thought he had something big," Shepard hands the paper back to him. "Helluva way to torpedo a career otherwise."

Anderson nods slowly, and Shepard knows that look he's got. "Sir?" she says.

He's staring at a point somewhere in the middle of the bookcase on the left wall. A horn blares a few streets away and a streetcar rolls by under the window. Shepard waits. She's learned that it's best not to interrupt.

"Why don't you see what you can find on him," Anderson says, turning his attention back to the paper. "LAPD files, service records - whatever turns up."

"I'll see what I can do but he'll be pretty hot right now. We shouldn't push our sources." Especially not for the sake of Anderson's professional curiosity. There's only so much off-book intel she can ask of her people before they start getting into hot water.

"No, I agree." He extracts the page with the Saleon story, folds it, and hands it to Shepard. "Keep things informal. Just shake the tree a little."

"Yes, sir." Shepard hesitates then adds, shrewdly, "You're not thinking of hiring him, are you?"

Anderson looks at her, brows raised, and already she knows she isn't getting a straight answer. "The three of us are all ex-law-enforcement in one way or another. If he's getting disillusioned, he might be useful."

Or completely insane, Shepard thinks, gloomily. The Saleon case stinks, there's no doubt about that, but 'soon-to-be-ex-LAPD' isn't exactly a selling point in her book, however polite the guy was to the dispatchers.

Anderson has disappeared behind his paper again, so she considers herself dismissed.

"I'll do some digging."

"Thanks, Shepard."

Somehow, two days later, Shepard finds herself dialling Garrus Vakarian's phone number.

It started with a few half-assed calls, to Joker at Edwards AFB and some girls from dispatch. Ashley was a non-starter - she couldn't remember the name at all. Shepard hadn't expected much but as it turned out, there was a bit to shake out of the tree.

Kelly and Rachel had a few useful leads on cases Vakarian might've worked on - and a few less useful leads on his smoky, alluring voice - so she spent an evening in the Hall of Records, trawling through old newspapers using the dates the girls had given her.

He got a boxer arrested in '37 for the murder of an opponent. The boxer's management team spiked the opponent's water with enough cocaine to put an elephant on its back, and he had a heart attack in the ring. The LAPD were prepared to rule it an accidental overdose, until Vakarian suggested the boxer and his team take a drink out of the glass. It was like something out of dime-store novel.

He got a commendation in '39 for apprehending Conrad Verner, a Hollywood director who killed two of his actresses in drug- and sex-fuelled rampage. Shepard remembered that one. She'd expected Verner to weasel out of the charges on Hollywood immunity - which he did anyway, in the end. He only served eighteen months out of a fifteen-year sentence.

Vakarian's military record was another story. Joker pulled up his name without too much trouble: he enlisted in November '41, just before the draft, attended basic at Camp Irwin and then just... vanished. No unit, no deployment, no discharge papers. 

"But his aptitudes are unbelievable, Shepard," Joker called, from six feet away from the phone, where he was rooting around in a filing cabinet. "There's no way they benched him. No way."

Joker thought - and Shepard agreed - that the majority of Vakarian's service record was under lock and key in an OSS basement. It wasn't a thought that filled Shepard with glee and the longer she sat on it, over a solitary dinner in her apartment that night, the more her trepidation grew. Some kinds of hidden things just make her skin crawl.

Joker had suggested she call in a favour at HQ. Shepard had just laughed; as if her codeword clearance hadn't been revoked the second they shipped her out of Nuremburg.

Regardless, Shepard pulls it all together and takes it to Anderson the following morning. After a half hour, while Shepard scrawls a to-do list for the day and occupies herself with coffee and a lukewarm bagel, he waves her back into his office. The radio is on quietly in the background, tuned as always to the LAPD dispatch frequency. The wind has picked up since yesterday - hot dry air from the ocean - so the windows are closed.

Anderson leans on his forearms, his hands knitted together on the desk. "I want you to meet him."

Shepard narrowed her eyes. "You are offering him a job, aren't you?"

"We need more hands, Shepard. We're turning down three cases a week sometimes because we don't have the manpower."

He's right, of course - anything mundane that looks like it might take heaps of gritty, time-consuming research - ownership disputes and background check work, mostly - is being sent packing. Ashley's R&I experience is perfect for those jobs, and they're lucrative, but the turnover is slow.

"He was clearly a good detective, if a little unorthodox - " Shepard interrupts with a snort. "You don't agree?" Anderson adds, brows raised.

"His - " She's got that creeping feeling in the back of her neck again. "His service record bothers me."

"I'm sure it looks a lot like your service record. And mine"

"But we knew each other then." Shepard says. "Sir, he - " she pinches her brow, " - he scored in the 3rd percentile at Camp Irwin, and then disappeared into obscurity during the deadliest armed conflict the world has ever seen." Her voice rises before she even knows she's angry. "He wasn't handing out fucking flyers. We have no idea what kind of shit he's dragging around. _No_ idea."

This is how it always happens to her; bursts of old anger and dread, like fire eating up sawdust. Anderson just looks at her. Shepard sighs, hard through her nose.

"If he was blow-torching civilian hospitals in Okinawa - " she continues, with forced calm, " - or gunning down fishing boats or - or raping and pillaging his way around Germany - what then?"

"It's behind us, Shepard," Anderson says, calmly, and that's when she knows she isn't winning this one.

He reminds her a little of an old draft horse, pulling resolutely on, on, on, through sun and snow. God only knows she never would've made it home without him. Some days the enormity of it all is more than Shepard can stand; she has no idea how half the world doesn't wake up screaming. She rubs the back of her neck.

"He was doing _something_ ," she says, stubbornly. "I don't like not knowing."

"Meet him," Anderson says, "and if you still want to veto after that, we can talk."

Ashley is on a stake out tonight, so Shepard loiters until Anderson clocks off and then grabs the telephone directory.

Vaczovsky, Vahn, Valentino - no, too far. She flips back a few of the tissue-paper pages. Vakarian, G.

She punches in the number and waits.

"Hello."

"Garrus Vakarian?"

Silence, then a shuffling, like he's adjusting the receiver.

"Who is this?"

"My name's Jane Shepard, I - "

"Are you a journalist?" he interrupts, "because I've already - "

"I'm a detective."

He scoffs. "There aren't any female detectives, you'll have to do better than that."

She can't understand what Kelly and Rachel meant; he just sounds like he needs to cough.

" _Private_ detective," she says, dryly.

"Ah."

Would Anderson know if she didn't meet him? Probably, Shepard thinks, glumly. She sighs, away from the receiver.

"Listen, Garrus - can I call you Garrus? -"

"Uh - "

"I work for the Normandy Detective Agency, down on Avalon Boulevard. We might have an offer for you, if you're interested."

"What kind of offer?" He's wary so at least he's not stupid.

"Can you meet me at the fountain in Exposition Park - nine o'clock tomorrow morning?"

The line is quiet and for a second she thinks he might refuse. "How's nine-thirty?"

Shepard makes an exasperated gesture to the empty office. "Fine, nine-thirty." Like he's got a busy schedule. "See you tomorrow."

She's halfway through putting the receiver down when he adds, "Wait - how will I know it's you?"

"I'll have an eye-patch and a parrot on my shoulder." He makes a noise that might have been a laugh. "You'll know," she says, and hangs up.

Shepard pulls up to the park gates at nine-twenty-six and lights up a cigarette. It's a few minutes' walk from the road to the fountain in the middle of the rose garden; soon the domed roof of the Natural History Museum drifts into view to her right, and a burst of water from the fountain fires up over the bushes a few hundred yards ahead. The sun is already pounding down and she's glad of the wide, asymmetric brim of her hat, even if the felt is heating up rapidly.

As she'd hoped, the benches set in a circle around the fountain are quiet. She stubs out her cigarette on the top of a trash can. There are two women with prams, talking animatedly, a man reading a newspaper - too old, and he's got a briefcase - and another man in a navy suit. He's watching the paths; the only person not absorbed in their own business.

His eyes skip over her at first as she approaches, then flick back. He has a grey hat and glasses with dark, rounded frames.

"Miss Shepard?"

"Mr Vakarian."

He stands to shake her hand. He's almost a foot taller than she is and not particularly broad, but perhaps his height just makes him look stretched out.

And his face - God almighty - the entire right side of his cheek, from the corner of his mouth up to his temple, right down to his collar, is all scar tissue. It has the puckered, discoloured look of a burn injury - white in places and raw pink in others.

"I think I was promised a parrot," he says, lightly. He's noticed her staring - he must have.

"Yeah - " Shepard reels her attention back in. " - it's his day off. The - uh - parrot."

Nice, Shepard. Slick. 

They sit, Shepard on the left. She tilts her head to block the sun with her hat. "So," she says. 

Garrus hooks his elbow over the back of the bench and waits for her to continue. She expected more bravado from a man who started a fist fight in a courthouse. His deference is throwing her off.

"You had an offer for me," he prompts.

All in good time, buddy. "How's the conduct investigation going?" she asks instead.

Garrus looks at her for a second, shrewd but not hostile. "I quit."

She nods, slowly. No surprise there. "You really think the doctor did it, huh?"

"I know he did." There's a bit of the bravado. "He was elbow deep in a cadaver when I arrested him." His voice is calm but something dark is creeping into his expression.

Shepard raises an eyebrow. That particular detail didn't make it into the Examiner. "And the charges still didn't stick?"

His eyes narrow suddenly. "Are you sure you're not a journalist?"

Shepard holds out both hands. "Am I taking notes?" she says. "Call it professional curiosity. One detective to another."

He's got that look - like he's running a checklist: her expression, her body language, her tone of voice, everything she's already told him, everything he's managed to find out about her since she called last night.

Shepard waits. Over Garrus's shoulder the man with the briefcase folds up his paper, tucks it under his arm and checks his watch.

"Forensics screwed up taking prints from the gloves Saleon was wearing," he says, eventually. "We could've had him on those alone."

He's got the tired, underground broil of a person who's been angry for months. She doesn't have much trouble believing he's the same man from the photograph.

"He was pulling up floorboards in the basement, dropping the bodies into gaps in the foundations and letting the rats do the rest. We matched five to active missing persons cases. The rest were too badly decomposed to identify or never reported in the first place."

The fountain lets off another huge puff of water, sending a shimmering rainbow into the air. The women with prams on the next bench over throw back their heads, laughing.

"It was some kind of awful organ transplant experiment. Post-mortem found four kidneys in one of them. The others all had bits missing; veins severed and repaired over and over. That kind of thing."

Shepard exhales. Garrus sits forward, elbows on his knees. She'd read all the gory details when the doctor was arrested and she'd felt sick then too.

"The papers said some evidence was discarded." Shepard watches him carefully.

"Yeah," he says, without looking at her. In profile, he has an angular jawline and a slightly Roman nose.

"You were the arresting officer, weren't you?"

He takes off his hat, pushes his hair back and fixes it back on. He's almost completely grey around the temples. "Saleon confessed. I got it out of him during the interrogation." He clears his throat. "Knocked it out of him, really."

She'd hoped for something a little more dubious. Roughing up suspects is par for the course - if he hadn't pulled the stunt in the courthouse, he'd probably still have a job. "So his lawyer got the confession thrown out because it was given under duress."

"We would've lost him on forensics anyway, it was worth a shot. The defense lawyers from State don't often bother with duress. It - " His jaw is tight and he's fidgeting with his watch. "It pisses me off. I know he did it - the whole damn courtroom knew he did it - the jury, the lawyers - all of them."

"Stop, you'll shake my faith in our fair and robust judicial system," Shepard says, which gets a grudging smile out of him.

She grills him a little on old cases, how long he worked for the LAPD, which desks, which precincts, who he was partnered with. He answers every question and doesn't ask her anything at all.

"The manager rinsed out the wrong glass after they spiked him." Garrus tells her, when she asks about the boxer. "There wasn't enough residue left to do any damage but they all had a pretty strange afternoon." He shakes his head; half disbelief, half amusement. "It's a miracle some of these people walk and breathe at the same time."

He's exactly what she hoped he wouldn't be; driven, resourceful - likable, even. Headstrong, sure, but probably not obstinate enough to worry Anderson. All the while, the scant file in Joker's office is chewing away at her.

"Did you serve?" she asks, suddenly.

He turns so she can see both sides of his face properly, squinting a little in the sun. "I didn't get this in a house fire if that's what you mean."

"It's not."

Not for the first time - nor probably the last - Shepard feels like his eyes are drilling down into her skull.

"I was with the 3rd Infantry," he says, "28th Division. Morocco, Sicily and Rome. I missed Germany for - " he gestures to his face, "- obvious reasons."

Shepard whistles, "You got around." If any of it is true. Something else to ask Joker about, anyway.

"You?"

"Nurse Corps," she says. "Soviet-Polish border, mostly."

It was the front the OSS had given her. She's got field hospital names and dates too, but they don't get much use.

"Helluva thing," Garrus says, quietly.

"Helluva thing," Shepard agrees.

The women with prams must have moved on when she wasn't looking. There are five teenagers on the bench instead - perched on the arms and draped over the back - all slacks and snazzy print dresses and rowdy laughter. Beyond the edge of the park, the LA traffic rumbles on.

3rd Infantry, 28th Division. Something about that seems familiar to her but she can't quite catch the end of the thread. The creeping feeling is starting in the back of her neck again.

Garrus would be good for business, she can't deny that. His skillset is hard to come by and - provided he hasn't burned all his bridges - he might have fresh LAPD contacts for them too, and if his aptitudes from Camp Irwin are anything to go by, he's a damn good shot. And he isn't completely insufferable.

Anderson was right. Why, _why_ is he always right?

"We're hiring," Shepard says, eventually. In her peripheral she sees his head turn. "That's the offer I'm supposed to talk to you about."

"The Normandy Detective Agency." Garrus says, like he's chewing the words over. "I did some reading - you're pretty good."

She gives him withering look. "We're _very_ good."

"The drug bust behind Hal Roach Studios last year - that was you?.

Shepard grins in spite of herself. "Sure was."

A routine stolen vehicle case that ended with a few thousand dollars in army surplus morphine hidden in paint cans. When she and Anderson struck a deal to turn over their evidence to the LAPD, the Vice chief looked like he couldn't decide whether to kill Shepard or kiss her. It was embarrassing for them, really, a private firm like theirs making a bust that big.

"Do you need an answer now?" Garrus asks.

"Sleep on it," she says. "Call me tomorrow."

Shepard can feel him looking at her. She checks her watch - somehow they've been here half an hour, and she's dying to get out of the sun and the glare of the fountain.

"Well," he says, "thank you for your time, Miss Shepard."

She glances at him. "It's just Shepard."

"Just Shepard," he repeats, blankly.

"No Miss." She'd never liked it much anyway and she likes it even less at thirty. "Oh - actually - " she adds, struck by a sudden thought, " - there's one more thing. About Saleon." 

"Shoot."

"Seems like somebody might be leaning on the papers - y'know - keeping him off the front page." The Times put the verdict pretty far down the running order too and the Daily News didn't even mention him by name.

Garrus frowns. "It's not unheard of for lawyers or powerful families to put pressure on them when a big name gets sent down but - " He makes shrugging gesture with one hand. " - Saleon's nobody. And he got off."

Shepard nods, thoughtfully. Something just doesn't feel right. The L.A. mob lives for a nasty, sexy mystery - Hollywood is built on them - and Shepard can't think of many stories more qualified than a psychopathic doctor, cackling gleefully as he makes mincemeat out of his patients. Garrus and his performance at the courthouse - a young, fearless detective; bold and uncompromising in the pursuit of justice - even handed them a neat little hero-figure. So _why_ didn't anybody seem interested?

"Well, it was just a thought," Shepard says, "it's not important." 

She doesn't want Garrus getting the bit between his teeth; they're not hiring him to go after Saleon. She stands and he follows quickly, buttoning his jacket. "It was good to meet you, Garrus." Jury's still out on whether she means it. "You'll let me know tomorrow?"

"Of course." Garrus shakes her hand. His expression is open and warm, and entirely too sincere. "Good to meet you too, Shepard."

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: brief, abstract mention of rape.
> 
> Glossary  
> R&I: Records & Investigation Bureau. Google for the LAPD except it's people with index cards. Stolen from LA Noire but I'm pretty sure it was a real thing.  
> AFB: Air Force Base  
> OSS: Office of Strategic Services. WWII precursor to the CIA.
> 
> The response to Flux was incredible; I'm eternally grateful to all who take the time to read and interact with this series in any capacity. I'm excited to see where this thing takes us.


End file.
